poll. How the world will end/humans cease to exist

[darkdream]

Originally Posted by Hombre Secreto

We have no way of defending ourselves against a comet, or GRB's. I just hope I don't survive any of those, because if anything does survive it's going to make earth a horrible place to try to live on.
There are numerous reasonable ideas on how to defend against, but there is no funding since there seems to be no immediate need for it. However if some astrophysicists predict that a massive foreign body from space was to hit earth within a decade, that would be enough time for engineers and such to develop something that would defend. The only reason this might not work is if a massive body was hidden by the sun, in which case we would be defenseless in our current state.

 

[Hombre Secreto]

Originally Posted by darkdream

There are numerous reasonable ideas on how to defend against, but there is no funding since there seems to be no immediate need for it. However if some astrophysicists predict that a massive foreign body from space was to hit earth within a decade, that would be enough time for engineers and such to develop something that would defend. The only reason this might not work is if a massive body was hidden by the sun, in which case we would be defenseless in our current state.

No there ain't. Unlike asteroids... comets are impossible to detect early, and even if you were to detect them early, they don't have the same makeup as an asteroid. It be difficult to try and deflect it.

 

[dcg]

Won't be from the sun's death - that's so far in the future that if humans have survived to that point, we will have long since found a way to leave earth.

Disease could wipe out a large portion of the population, but it seems unlikely that it would kill every human being.

Same for Global warming/climate change.

Which leaves us with the Asteroid and Nuclear options, with Nuclear being far more likely.

 

[L.R.]

Sun Supernova? We have the wrong type of star for that. It's a fizzle out type, rather than the explosion type. (We have roughly 5 billion years till it expands and envelops the earth... though the consequences of the pre-expansion changes would likely make Earth uninhabitable) A more likely solar event would be a gamma ray burst within our galaxy, or a pulsar event which could theoretically "sterilize" broad swathes of the galaxy. These events are theorized to be common enough that advaced civilizations are unlikely to exist (You have a few million years of evolution, just get up to making the wheel and boom.... your solar system gets destroyed. As for asteroid, the idea that we can defend ourselves is flawed. We can't even detect collision courses reliably, and sometimes not until AFTER they already missed us: http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/news_detail.cfm?ID=114 (Summary: A pair of the closest "near misses" weren't detected until they had missed and moved along..) Of course we could be living in a false vacuum.... and that'd just be a cheery thought........

 

[Lighthouse]

Iran may trigger nuclear war before we know it.

 

[MetroStyles]

Eventually all humans will grow up as misguided youths in tough inner cities, worrying they'll never see their 20th birthday, and they will be right.

 

[acidboy]

either an asteroid the size of texas will be headed here and a space shuttle full of deep sea oil drillers fail to insert the nuclear bombs deep enough to split the asteroid in half before it enters the earth's atmosphere and then it will hit the united state's eastern seaboard, specifically at close range to new york city, and the tidal waves will destroy the immediate area, and the impact will cause dust to cover the earth for a couple of years which will then trigger a series of events that ultimately will cause the extinction of all plant and animal life.

that, or robots and the internet will wage war against humans.

 

[amplifiedheat]

meets anti

 

[MetroStyles]

Originally Posted by amplifiedheat

meets anti

= anti-

 

[cold war painter]

You've got death/war/pestilence, I propose famine as a missing option e.g. death of all the bees, agricultural collapse, mass starvation.

 

[T4phage]

wait until the large hardon collider is fully powered up and opens a black hole that will swallow us all up

 

[WN2]

Effects of nuclear weapons tend to be exaggarated a lot. An all-out nuclear war could certainly devastate Earth but it wouldn't end the world or kill all humans.

 

[MrG]

Originally Posted by fwiffo

You're all very tied up into yourselves. The world, even if it's half a chunk of rock like the Star Wars Death Star, will always be around. We, on the other hand, could be long gone from it.

It reminds me of this article I read from this academic who said the whole saving the planet slogan is rubbish because it's not the planet that needs saving, it's us. The planet will do just fine with or without us on it.

This conflates "world" and "Earth." When humanity ceases to exist the world will have ended. The Earth, however, will still be around.

 

[G0079]

I think that starvation due to desertification or ecological collapse could be a possiblity.

 

[Gravitas]

My Lord this thread is filled with stupid, leftist liberals. Does no one hear read the Bible?